Thecus W4000+ NAS review - NAS Explained

NAS - Network Attached Storage

Times have changed and our storage requirements have moved from kilobytes, to megabytes, to Gigabytes and now even Terabytes of storage. And sure, it won't be long until we reach Petabytes either. Oh and after that there's Exabyte and then Zettabyte.

So we passed the Terabyte marker. With our hefty demand in storage capabilities, the industry had to constantly adapt and introduce new features in hardware. Storage units got much bigger in volume over the year, 6 TB HDDs have just been introduced onto the market with 10TB already in the pipeline. In that line of storage solutions there is one product series growing fast and now reaching SOHO and consumer based markets. They are called NAS units, network attached storage. And there has been a lot of development in these nifty little boxes. Pretty much they are little servers that you can hook onto your network and then function as file-server.

The NAS units are often small, do not use a lot of power compared to say your PC, but they are highly configurable, offer redundancy as some models can even handle RAID internally. Network Attachable Units are among the most advanced home servers available on the market today. Products feature multiple HDDs setups, partitions, RAID, USER and USERGROUP based access with the help of FTP, web server, MySQL, hot swappable drives; these are just some of the features that a NAS unit can handle. And though expensive, a product like this is just too darn handy when it comes to file-storage and management over your network. 

NAS / DAS -- What's it all about ?

The key aspect of NAS is that it is storing data on a server connecting through the Ethernet towards a PC, your NAS unit is in fact acting as the server, your PC is a client. A DAS storage device is not networked. In other words, it's not using a storage area network (SAN), network-attached storage (NAS), Ethernet or Fibre Channel switches. The storage has a direct connect to a server/PC. So that's the main difference, each has it's own advantages and disadvantages. DAS units connect directly to a PC and often are a little cheaper. NAS units can be accessed by any PC (client) within the network with proper security of course.

The Thecus W4000+

The Thecus W4000+ can house up to four hard drives or SSDs.  The unit is tied to a Gigabit Ethernet jack, meaning 1000 / 8 minus QOS and overhead is roughly a maximum of 100 to 125 MB/sec. There are two Gigabit jacks though that you could team. You can install four storage units in today's tested device NAS, these can be set up a RAID mirror array or pool, the the 4-bay model with hot-swap (remove/insert) capability on the hard drives. The RAID functionality of unit supports RAID 0,1 or with the 4+ HDD models RAID 5. Once you have installed your hardware, you'll need to bind the NAS towards your Ethernet with a CAT5e/6e cable to a switch, the Thecus W4000+ offers more connectors though, you may also make use of eSATA or USB 2.0/3.0 making this NAS unit really a bit of a DAS unit as well.

• 4-Bay Diskless
• Intel Atom D2701 (2.13GHz Dual Core) Processor
• Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Essentials
• License : Window Storage Server R2 Essential included, pre-installed on 64GB SSD

When you have your HDDs installed, and the device connected to a monitor and keyboard.mouse you'll need to start-up the Windows software suite to bind and setup your configuration. WSS is factory installed and just requires configuration an updates which will be downloaded automatically. 

The Thecus W4000+ Hardware

The Thecus W4000+ is based upon an Intel Atom D2701 Dual-core (2 Core) 2.13 GHz. Factory installed on the W4000 is a 2GB SO-DIMM DDR3L memory module, but you may expand to a maximum of 8GB (single channel) with that model. The Thecus W4000+ has 4GB RAM factory installed, which really is the sweet spot for this NAS unit as Windows likes memory, a lot. The Thecus W4000+ can house four 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch SSDs or HDDs and also supports hot-swapping. You will plenty of connection options including three USB 3.0 (two at the back and two in the front) and one eSATA ports. The unit sports two Gigabit Ethernet ports to support fail-over and dual-IP setups. Very interesting to see is that at the backside you will also spot an HDMI 1.4a and S/PDIF connector, these are however limited to a resolution of 1600x1200. This functionality is controlled via the desktop interface, you will need to plug in a monitor, mouse and keyboard to configure this device. Once setup you can use remote access. 

An interesting fact is that the OS is housed on an actual 60GB SATA3 SSD, we'll have a look at that in the photo-shoot, but this is an excellent feature that speeds up the OS tremendously of course.

The Thecus W4000+ Software

Operating system compatibility wise the Thecus W4000+ supports file sharing across Linux, UNIX, Mac, and Windows platforms based upon its Window Storage Server R2 Essential included, pre-installed on the 60GB SSD BTW. Also for the more advanced among you, Windows AD (Active Directory) is supported to help create an easy-to-access environment. Since this product acts as a server ALL PC's within your network can connect to it. Being WSS based you can connect up-to 1-50 employees in your office, or PCs in your household. WSS however also offers features like Office 365 & Microsoft Azure: Cloud Service Integration as well as Active Directory Domain Services: Scalable, Secure User Management and Data Deduplication.

• Each physical server requires one license
• Essentials edition can only be used on servers that have 1 or 2 CPUs
• A maximum of 25 named users or 50 named devices can use the server. If you have more than 25 users, you should consider Windows Server 2012 Standard edition.
• CALs (Client Access Licenses) are not required for Windows Server Essentials edition

I stated this on the previous page already, but if you purchase the Microsoft Window Storage Server R2 Essential software yourself, you'll have to drop 399 USD. And that makes this Thecus product incredible value. But let's dive into a more detailed photo shoot.